Story By: Simon Glover, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Asia Wire Report
This British woman has become an online celebrity in Indonesia because of this amazing tattoo of the bloodied face of a martial arts movie star.
Lucy Denholm, 27, from Edinburgh, drove all the way to Macclesfield, in Cheshire, to have the body art done by top tattooist Alex Wright, and later posted a photo of it on Instagram.
There, it reached the attention of Iko himself who was so impressed that he shared it with his army of nearly a million followers on the social media network.
Pictures Credit: AsiaWire & AsiaWire/@lucyedenholm
Lucy’s tattoo was then picked up by the Indonesian media on the back of Iko’s comment: “The fact that someone inked this to their body is just astonishing. I’m deeply humbled. Cool tattoo.”
An overjoyed Lucy soon realised what her hero had done and replied: “I can’t believe you saw it, nothing is ever going to beat this!”
Lucy later revealed exclusively to Asia Wire what made her make the 10-hour return drive to Macclesfield to sit in a tattooist’s chair for another five hours to have the body art done.
She had been inspired by Iko’s role as ‘Rama’ in Indonesian martial arts movies The Raid and The Raid 2 which were both written, directed and edited by the Welsh filmmaker Gareth Evans.
Lucy said: “The Raid is one of my favourite films and one of the best action films ever made, in my opinion.
“I love the ending of The Raid 2 where Rama says: ‘I’m done’, and is covered in blood because you really feel as knackered as him if you watch both films back to back, 4.5 hours of martial arts.
“It’s just great and an iconic image. I went to Macclesfield because Alex Wright’s work is world class and he specialises in horror portraits so has tattooed loads of bloody images.
“I knew he’d do an amazing job and it was worth the travel. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone except him to do it.
“I was sooo happy when I saw Iko had reposted it, I’m still a bit giddy about it haha, It’s cool it went viral in Indonesia, I never thought anyone over there would see it.”
Lucy said her fiancee Martyn also loved her tattoo and was now planning to visit the same Macclesfield studio to have a tattoo done of US heavy rock band Slipknot.
Most online commentators in Indonesia were clearly impressed with Lucy’s devotion to Iko, such as netizen ‘leenefort’ who commented: “That tattoo is really cool, Lucy!”
The ViralTab page is created by and dedicated to professional, independent freelance journalists. It is a place for us to showcase our work. When our news is sold to our media partners, we will include the link here.
